


all the words he ever needed

by Arcafira



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Aziraphale Loves Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale's Bookshop (Good Omens), Comfort, Crowley Loves Aziraphale (Good Omens), Ficlet, Gifts, Love Poems, M/M, Prompt Fic, Snake Crowley (Good Omens), soft angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-21
Updated: 2020-08-21
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:22:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25993603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arcafira/pseuds/Arcafira
Summary: Crowley becomes quiet; then, he's a snake. Aziraphale knows how to comfort him through the things he doesn't talk about.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 20
Kudos: 38
Collections: SOSH - Guess the Author #04 "A Gift"





	all the words he ever needed

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Guess the Author event on the Soft Omens Snuggle House Discord. Each submitted fic should be 500 words or less. The prompt for this round was 'gift.'

There are moments, Aziraphale finds. In the slower pace of their new life, he learns to see them coming. Crowley folding in on himself, stiff on the soft cushions of the bookshop sofa. Crowley, eyes unshaded and full gold, staring at nothing. This is the fallout, he thinks. Eden’s serpent—allowed for the first time to unguard himself—is finally able to feel the weight of millennia.

Tea and soft blankets and gentle words are what he offers. A shelter in the circle of his wings. Hand on cool cheek. A kiss upon the serpentine mark near his ear.

Within the day, the form that Aziraphale has come to know as Crowley’s vanishes.

He finds him again, of course—coiled around an antique table leg, curled tight in the empty cash drawer of the old register, nestled in a spot of sun on a weathered tome. Aziraphale becomes a master of clandestine observation, knows how Crowley’s serpentine body drapes itself, hugs itself, how each dark scale shimmers in the light.

When Crowley wedges himself into a dark place, Aziraphale knows that Crowley will need more time to process, to come back. The angel doesn’t push, doesn’t rush, doesn’t pry.

When he finds him, he murmurs “Your scales look wonderful today, dear” and offers him a place around his neck. Sometimes, the serpent will oblige him, and he’ll go about his shelving and inventorying with Crowley nestled under his collar. Occasionally, he’ll startle from a book he’d been reading and find the serpent having tugged his bowtie undone and fleeing into an inner coat pocket.

“Crowley,” he’ll admonish, but it’ll come out as a good-natured chuckle.

That’s when he can expect that, when he rouses from his all-night reading to open the shop, he’ll find Crowley sprawled across the sofa as if nothing in him had shifted—as if _he_ hadn’t shifted to accommodate it.

“Good Morning, love,” Aziraphale says as he bustles past. He has tried to make it casual—this _love_ thing—has been trying it these past few months, ever since he found that freedom had loosened his tongue. Crowley makes a wordless noise of acknowledgement, his own attempt at keeping it _casual_. There’s just the sound, a tentative approach towards what they’re building here, together.

Crowley calls the angel to him with a look. Opens his mouth to speak—and there are words, ages-worth, waiting to be made sound—but he wouldn’t have taken a speechless form if he’d known how to line up the syllables, how to lay open his heart.

Aziraphale speaks instead. “I made something.” He retrieves a large sheet of paper from his desk and offers it to Crowley who takes it in shaking hands. Then removes his glasses. His golden gaze traces Aziraphale’s work, a collage of aged love poems arranged like constellations, the lines of ink brushed through the words forming the likeness of a serpent.

“Angel,” he breathes, all the words he ever needed in his hands.


End file.
